Adam Bryant - The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders

THE CEO TEST

THE CEO TEST

MASTER THE CHALLENGES THAT MAKE OR BREAK ALL LEADERS

ADAM BRYANT & KEVIN SHARER

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

BOSTON, MA

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Copyright 2021 Adam Bryant

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bryant, Adam, author. | Sharer, Kevin, 1948- author.

Title: The CEO test : master the challenges that make or break all leaders Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer.

Description: Boston, MA : Harvard Business Review Press, [2021] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020038371 (print) | LCCN 2020038372 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633699519 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781633699526 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Chief executive officers. | Executive ability. | Leadership.

Classification: LCC HD38.2 .B787 2021 (print) | LCC HD38.2 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038371

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038372

ISBN: 978-1-63369-951-9

eISBN: 978-1-63369-952-6

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

To Jeanetta and Carol

Contents

THE CEO TEST

Introduction

D espite all the effort over the past several decades to understand what it takes to be an effective leader, the challenges of leadership remain enormously difficult and elusive for people at every level and across all types of organizations, from businesses to nonprofits to the public sector.

It is true for first-time managers, who often struggle to make the transition from being a sole contributor to achieving through others. How demanding should you be? When do you let go, and when do you step in to do the work? How do you provide direct feedback without being too critical? How do you strike the right balance of being friendly without trying to be just one of the gang? What are the right moments to show vulnerability? Or is it always better to put up a front of never-let-them-see-you-sweat confidence?

More-senior positions bring a whole new set of challenges. You are now leading leaders. There are layers of managers below you who all have to be aligned around shared goals, requiring constant communication. You have to build and manage new networks of relationships across the organization. The expectations to deliver at a consistently high level can be unforgiving. The sheer volume of meetings, emails, and cross-department project deadlines become a test of endurance, as the work starts earlier, ends later, and bleeds more often into the weekend.

For those who become chief executive officers, the demands grow exponentially. The loneliness. The weight of responsibility. The relentless second-guessing and criticism. The pressure to have a leadership team of all stars who can also work together as an all-star team. The array of 24/7 demands that require extraordinary stamina to always be on, confident, and inspiring. The gray areas and trade-offs of tough decisions that often leave no one happy. The bubble that keeps bad news from reaching them. The demands from investors and board directors to deliver steady growth across every measure of performance. The expectation to always have the right answer when it can be hard just to figure out the right question.

But those pressures are not unique to the role of chief executive. We believe that all leaders face their own version of a CEOs tests; its just that the intensity and consequences of those challenges grow as you move higher into roles with more breadth and complexity. That is why we will be sharing the stories, insights, and lessons from dozens of chief executives in this booknot because their jobs are unique, but because the universal challenges of leadership are brought into their highest and sharpest relief in the CEO position, providing the richest lessons for everyone who aspires to be a better leader. Simply put, we believe that learning how to lead like a CEO will make you more effective in your role today and lift the trajectory of your career.

We think we make a pretty good team for this project.

Adam has conducted in-depth interviews with more than six hundred CEOs and other leaders, starting with the weekly Corner Office interview series that he created for the New York Times (Kevin was among the first CEOs Adam interviewed). That series was launched with a different approach to interviewing chief executives. Rather than asking them about their strategies and industry trends, Adam has focused instead on timeless questions about the most important leadership lessons that the CEOs had learned. He interviewed leaders from all walks of life and backgrounds beyond the world of businessnonprofits, academia, government agencies, the military, and the world of entertainment. He interviewed well-known CEOs like Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Bob Iger of Disney, and young CEOs running small startups. And he interviewed a large percentage of women and minorities, but never asked them any gender- or race-specific questions because he wanted to interview everyone the same way, as leaders first and only.

Then in 2017, Adam joined Merryck & Co., an executive mentoring and senior leadership development firm, whose work with hundreds of clients over the past decade provides another deep well of experience from which we have drawn insights.

Kevin was president and then CEO of Amgen, the worlds largest biotechnology company, over two decades, leading the companys expansion, almost entirely through organic growth, from $1 billion to nearly $16 billion in annual revenues. After stepping down from Amgen in 2012, he taught strategy and management at Harvard Business School for seven years and cocreated with his then faculty colleague and the current CEO of G.E., Larry Culp, and Nitin Nohria, the Harvard Business School dean, a course on the life and role of the CEO and how to lead senior executive teams. He has served on the boards of Chevron, Unocal, Northrop Grumman, 3M, and in his roles as an executive, director, and mentor, he has been involved with more than twenty successful CEO transitions. While you will be hearing from dozens of chief executives in this book, we also will draw on Kevins stories and insightsfrom his experiences that include serving as an officer in the US Navy and his rise up the ranks as an executive at McKinsey, General Electric, and MCIto bring certain themes to life in several of the chapters. In effect, Kevin will serve as a player-coach in this book, as both coauthor and one of the CEOs sharing their experiences.